.NET Agent Skills

# .NET Agent Skills: setup notes

This kit holds setup notes written by Mindket. It does not contain the skills, the plugins, the custom agents or the scripts. Those install from the .NET team’s repository: https://github.com/dotnet/skills

License: MIT, Copyright (c) .NET Foundation and Contributors. Full text: https://github.com/dotnet/skills/blob/main/LICENSE

.NET Agent Skills is made by the .NET team at Microsoft, as the marketplace file names its owner. Mindket lists it and is not Microsoft.

The pages these notes came from: the README (https://github.com/dotnet/skills/blob/main/README.md), the marketplace files for Claude Code, Codex and Cursor (.claude-plugin, .agents/plugins and .cursor-plugin), the plugin READMEs and plugin.json files under https://github.com/dotnet/skills/tree/main/plugins, a number of the SKILL.md files in them, and the README of the agentic-workflows folder. Facts about Claude Code’s plugin commands come from its own docs (https://code.claude.com/docs/en/discover-plugins), named where they are used. Mindket copied every command and ran none of them.

## What it is

The .NET team’s curated set of portable skills for coding agents, grouped into plugins, plus a few host-specific custom agents. The README describes them as portable skills and host-specific custom agents. A skill is a text file of instructions that the agent follows when your request fits its description, in the Agent Skills format (https://agentskills.io). The pack is a plugin marketplace named dotnet-agent-skills. The install unit is the plugin, not a single skill.

The README also points to a Skill Value dashboard (https://dotnet.github.io/skills/) that shows token use, elapsed time, activation and not-passed rates by plugin, skill, executor model and judge model.

## The plugins

The marketplace files list sixteen plugins. The last column names some of the skills inside each, as Mindket read the repository on 2026-11-07. The team adds and renames skills over time, so the repository is the final word.

| Plugin | What it covers | Skills inside |
|---|---|---|
| dotnet | Core C# and .NET work, and a C# language server for hosts that support it | csharp-expert, csharp-refactoring, dotnet-breaking-changes, msbuild, setup-local-sdk |
| dotnet-advanced | Niche scenarios | csharp-scripts, dotnet-pinvoke, nuget-trusted-publishing, vectorization |
| dotnet-data | Data access and Entity Framework | optimizing-ef-core-queries, create-datadriven-aspnetcore |
| dotnet-diag | Performance investigations, debugging and incident analysis | analyzing-dotnet-performance, dotnet-trace-collect, dump-collect, microbenchmarking, clr-activation-debugging, android-tombstone-symbolication, apple-crash-symbolication |
| dotnet-msbuild | MSBuild and build skills: failure diagnosis, performance, code quality, modernization, plus the binlog MCP server | binlog-failure-analysis, binlog-generation, build-perf-diagnostics, incremental-build, msbuild-modernization, troubleshoot-binlog-mcp and about fifteen more |
| dotnet-nuget | NuGet package management | convert-to-cpm |
| dotnet-upgrade | Migrating projects across framework versions, language features and compatibility targets | migrate-dotnet8-to-dotnet9, migrate-dotnet9-to-dotnet10, migrate-dotnet10-to-dotnet11, migrate-nullable-references, dotnet-aot-compat, thread-abort-migration |
| dotnet-maui | .NET MAUI: setup, diagnostics, navigation, binding, dependency injection, layout, theming | dotnet-maui-doctor, maui-data-binding, maui-shell-navigation, maui-theming and others |
| dotnet-ai | AI and ML in .NET | technology-selection |
| dotnet-template-engine | Template discovery, project scaffolding and template authoring | template-discovery, template-instantiation, template-comparison, template-authoring, template-validation, template-smart-defaults |
| dotnet-test | Running, generating, analyzing and improving tests | run-tests, code-testing, coverage-analysis, crap-score, test-anti-patterns, test-smell-detection, grade-tests, writing-mstest-tests and others |
| dotnet-test-migration | Migrating test frameworks and platforms | migrate-mstest-v1v2-to-v3, migrate-mstest-v3-to-v4, migrate-xunit-to-xunit-v3, migrate-xunit-to-mstest, migrate-nunit-to-mstest, migrate-vstest-to-mtp |
| dotnet-aspnetcore | ASP.NET Core: middleware, endpoints, real-time communication, API patterns | dotnet-webapi, convert-blazor-server-to-webapp |
| dotnet-blazor | Blazor: component authoring, interactivity, web application patterns | author-component, configure-auth, create-blazor-project, support-prerendering, use-js-interop and others |
| dotnet-winforms | Windows Forms | winforms-expert |
| dotnet11 | New .NET 11 APIs and language features | process-api-net11, system-text-json-net11 |

Source: the README’s table “What’s Included”, the marketplace files and each plugin’s skills folder. The repository also holds a dotnet-experimental folder that none of the four marketplace files lists, so these notes leave it out.

## Files in this kit

- setup/claude-code-and-copilot-cli.md: the README’s marketplace route for Claude Code and GitHub Copilot CLI, with what Claude Code’s own docs add
- setup/codex.md: the Codex CLI marketplace and the skill-installer route for one skill
- setup/cursor.md: the Cursor marketplace route
- setup/vscode.md: VS Code and VS Code Insiders, a preview feature
- setup/first-run.md: what you need on your computer, which plugin to start with, and a first request for several of them

## What you need first

- An agent host that supports plugin marketplaces: Claude Code, GitHub Copilot CLI, Codex CLI v0.121.0 or later, Cursor, or VS Code with its preview plugin setting.
- A .NET SDK for most of the work. The dotnet plugin’s README names the .NET 10 SDK, with dotnet on PATH, as the prerequisite for its C# language server.
- Git, for the hosts that clone the marketplace repository. Claude Code’s plugin page says it clones a GitHub marketplace over SSH or HTTPS.
- No account, key or sign-up for the skills. The agent itself runs on your own account for that tool.

## What installs where

- Each plugin you install: the host keeps the plugin’s files itself. A plugin holds skills, and some also hold custom agents, a language server declaration or an MCP server.
- dotnet: a C# language server, started with dotnet dnx roslyn-language-server, for .cs, .razor and .cshtml files, in hosts that support plugin language servers. Codex plugin installs expose this plugin’s skills only.
- dotnet-msbuild: an MCP server named binlog, started with dotnet dnx Microsoft.AITools.BinlogMcp, in hosts that load it.
- The agents/*.agent.md files are GitHub Copilot custom-agent files. The README says Codex does not install them as native agents.

## Your data

The skills are text. A few bundle scripts that the agent can run on your computer, in PowerShell, C# or Python, such as the coverage and nullable-readiness scanners and two crash symbolication scripts. The agent runs them, and your host decides whether to ask you first. The two servers are started through dotnet dnx with the flags --yes and --prerelease, which lets dotnet dnx fetch and run a prerelease version from your NuGet sources. Anything the agent reads in your code goes to your agent’s model as in any other work.

## Update and remove

The README gives an update line for each host and no removal step. setup/claude-code-and-copilot-cli.md and setup/codex.md have the update lines.

## Agentic workflows

The repository also publishes four GitHub Agentic Workflows in its agentic-workflows folder: build failure analysis, MSBuild quality review, test failure analysis and unskip closed tests. They are a separate thing from the plugins: they install into a repository with the gh command line. The README gives this line for the whole set, which Mindket did not run:

```bash
gh aw add-wizard dotnet/skills/agentic-workflows@main
```

The folder’s README says to pin a production install to a release tag or commit SHA instead of main.

README.md  8 KB
setup/claude-code-and-copilot-cli.md  3 KB
setup/codex.md  2 KB
setup/cursor.md  1 KB
setup/first-run.md  4 KB
setup/vscode.md  1 KB